This handbook offers a systematic exploration of current key topics in travel writing studies. It addresses the history, impact, and unique discursive variety of British travel writing by covering some of the most celebrated and canonical authors of the genre as well as lesser known ones in more than thirty close-reading chapters. Combining theoretically informed, astute literary criticism of single texts with the analysis of the circumstances of their production and reception, these chapters offer excellent possibilities for understanding the complexity and cultural relevance of British travel writing.

Taking up the historical evolution of Darwin and his theories and the cultural responses they have inspired, Reflecting on Darwin poses the following questions: 'How are the apparatuses in the mid-nineteenth century and at the turn of the twenty-first century interconnected with bio-scientific paradigms in art, literature, culture and science?' 'How are naturalism, determinism and Darwinism - the eugenics of the nineteenth century and the genetic coding of the twentieth century - positioned, embodied and staged in various media configurations and media genres?' and 'How have particular media apparatuses formed, displaced or stabilized the various concepts of humankind in the framework of evolutionary theory?' Ranging from the early circulation of Darwin's ideas to the present, this interdisciplinary collection pays particular attention to Darwin's postmillennial reception. Beginning with an overview of the historical development of contemporary ecological and ethical fears, Reflecting on Darwin then turns to Darwin's influence on contemporary media, neo-Victorian literature and culture, science fiction literature and film, and contemporary theory. In examining the plurality of ways in which Darwin has been rewritten and reappropriated, this unique volume both mirrors and inspects the complexity of recent debates in Victorian and neo-Victorian studies.